Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Friday, November 1, 2013 in HART, Lectures, VRC.

Hilary Gopnik, co-director of the Naxçivan Archaeological Project at Emory University, will deliver a lecture about Alexander the Great in the far reaches of his empire on Tuesday, November 5, at 7 p.m. in the Nashville Parthenon at Centennial Park. Her lecture, entitled On the Edge of Alexander’s World: The Unfinished Palace at Oğlanqala, Azerbaijan, will take us to the remote location where she excavates a fascinating structure linking the Greek world to the lands explored by Alexander.

Gopnik teaches in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and the Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program at Emory, and holds degrees from the University of Toronto (Ph.D. and M.A.) and McGill University (B.A.). Her fields of research are Near Eastern and Greek archaeology, particularly Iran and the Caucasus, and the Medes and Persians.

Her doctoral research centered on Godin Tepe, one of the only archaeological sites that can be firmly identified with the Medes of Iran (8th to 6th centuries BCE). She recently co-authored the final publication of that site: On the High Road: The History of Godin Tepe, Iran.

Since 2008 Gopnik has shifted her archaeological focus from Iran northward to Azerbaijan, where she is the co-director of excavations at the Iron Age (8th to 1st centuries BCE) citadel site of Oğlanqala. In the summer of 2013 this project began work at the nearby site of Qizqala, which has settlement occupation lasting for some 2,000 years from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age.

Free and open to the public, Gopnik’s lecture is sponsored by the Nashville Society of the Archaeological Institute of America and Vanderbilt’s department of classical studies. Those who plan to attend the lecture are encouraged to call the Nashville Parthenon at 615.862.8431 to reserve a seat.